Writing headlines can cause even the most seasoned writer high anxiety.

The job of the headline is to concisely sum up the article in such a manner as to stimulate interest in the accompanying article or story. But writers know that the hardest thing to write is often the thing that requires the least amount of words. Compare it to telling a story versus telling a joke; many folks can tell a story halfway well but can’t tell a joke to save a drowning kitten.

Not exactly sure why this needed quotes at all (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xurble/59305536/)

Advertising executive extraordinaire David Ogilvy noted, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar.” Ain’t that the truth? The headline is the baited hook. The headline draws readers’ interest in enough to encourage them to go on and read the article. In these times of rapid-fire communications and über-multitasking, that’s some feat.

But “How to write the ideal headline” isn’t the title of this entry. And that speech belongs to someone else. So — what is this entry about? Quotation marks in headlines! And it’s really a simple thing:

If you must use quotation marks in headlines, use single quotation marks. Captions (i.e., cutlines) follow the same M.O. as body copy.

Many moons ago, when typesetters had to manually set type, space was golden. Now, space is still golden, but a myriad of fonts and new-fangled software programs help typesetters (or designers or graphic artists) mess with the kerning and leading and such in order to maximize what little space there is. There still isn’t much room to fiddle with, but at least it can be fiddled with, whereas it wasn’t an option not long ago.

Highfalutin double quotation marks are appropriate for quotes in articles, stories, blogs and captions — just not for the headline.

Check out this example headline from The Washington Post:

Iran warns that it will deal ‘fiercely’ with protesters.

Makes sense, yes? While the single quotation marks may look a bit odd at first, they do grow on you. And here’s a fun little factoid: Many people don’t like to use quotations in headlines. Many, too, have done research that shows headline quotes as increasing readership and sales; the same research also shows that quotes in a subhead, rather than a headline, increase readership and sales even more.

Funny what you learn when you read more than just a headline, huh?

“Live in the now!” That’s one of Garth’s many quotes from “Wayne’s World” that has managed to survive — nay, thrive — for nearly 20 years since the movie’s release. It is also an appropriate concept to apply to the short line of copy that typically lingers below an article’s photograph: the caption, or cutline. For those who follow the AP Stylebook to the T, you may prefer to use the term “caption.” No matter what you call that line, though, it tells the reader the who, what, when, where, why and how of the picture.

Consider this: Captions are read more often than the articles they accompany, second only to headlines. What do you tend to read? If you’re like most people, you check out the headlines and captions to determine whether you want to spend your time delving into the entire article. (Read an entire article? The horror.) Although many captions are only one sentence, a second sentence in the caption is completely acceptable, and it may be written in either the present or past tense. The first sentence, however, should almost always be written in the present tense.

To ponder:

• Why must the first sentence of a caption be in the present tense? Since the photo captures a specific moment in time, the present tense gives a feeling of immediacy that makes what happened in the photo seem more relevant than if it happened several days, weeks or months ago. Using the past tense may stir up the feeling of receiving old news. And who wants old news? Not most readers.
  

  A beagle allows a kitten to snuggle in Curitiba, Brazil, on Jan. 21, 2007. The dog provided comfort and shelter for its tiny companion, who had become separated from its mother during the previous night’s storm. (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmatsuoka/2582269821/)

• What rare situations would require a cutline to employ the past tense? Well, that’s a tough one. The AP Stylebook website and style guide don’t refer to the past tense concerning that first sentence. One guess is that the AP Stylebook is not referencing the first sentence in a cutline, but the second. It’s apparently OK to write the second sentence in either present tense or past tense, depending on the publication’s or client’s preference. Weird, weird stuff.

So — if you have AP Stylebook-documented proof of a reason to use the past tense in a caption or cutline in the first sentence of a caption or cutline, please send it our way.

This caption, while not 100 percent factual, for the purpose of this entry gives all the pertinent information required of a cutline — who, what, when, where and why.

Your caption, of course, will be on the up-and-up, factually speaking. It will draw your readers in, coercing them to read the accompanying article. And you will be the caption-writing hero to your client. Let it be.

Happy caption writing!

Typesetters actually used to “set” type and fonts and weights (thus, the moniker). Back when such design capabilities were not just a quick keystroke away as they are today, old-school headlines were written with every word — or nearly every word — initial-capped on every word:

• Jane Doe Relocates To Denver, Buys Mountain

Such stylized formatting helped readers back in the day know that the headline was, indeed, separate from whatever followed. More robust. More important. More headlinerish. The mix of uppercase and lowercase letters was a technique that was supposed to draw readers in, hopefully to have them become engaged with whatever followed. And that technique taught readers that the headline was a headline simply because every first letter of every (or nearly every) word was bigger than the rest. Sometimes, though, that technique focused more on the presence of the headline than on what followed.

In this modern world of faster-than-Superman wordsmiths who can craft headlines as they go, type treatment has evolved — so says the AP Stylebook. For some time now, the go-to writer’s guide has mandated initial caps only for the first word in the headline, as well as any proper nouns:

• Jane Doe relocates to Denver, buys mountain

Easy, simple and clean.

Character design overload: down style, all caps, all initial caps and an improperly used ellipsis, to boot.

Tiny articles (e.g., a, an, the) and prepositions (e.g., to, of, for) no longer receive preferential initial-uppercase treatment. The size of the initial letters no longer suggests heightened meaning. Now, writers must truly offer compelling text that lures casual passers-by, drawing them into their mystical world of words. Headlines must make the reader want to read more, not only the headline.

Viva the down-style headline! If nothing else, it’s easier on the reader’s eye. It invites readers instead of coercing them. It implies a (slightly) higher level of understanding rather than speaking to the audience as if it’s a first-grade teacher reading a held-up book. That alone must count for something.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Alamosbasement.

I had just started working here at the agency and was excited to start things off right with an updated AP Stylebook at my fingertips. Since my own copy of the veritable writer’s bible was the 2007 version, I thought that getting a newer version was the wise thing to do. Staying current with the 2010 version (even though it’s already 2011, thank you very much) seemed like a grand idea, especially since the 2011 version wasn’t going to be published for a few months yet.

For those with inquiring minds, the 2010 version is the first style guide put out by the AP folks with website spelled as one word and an uppercase “W” on the first word. That change alone was a monumental advancement. Ask any writer or editor (or even an opinionated designer or two — they’ll freely offer their stance on the subject); he or she will probably be able to explain in enormous detail the good, the bad and the ugly concerning the one-word-versus-two spelling format.

Now — back to the crapshoot.

As a wordsmith in my new gig at Armstrong|Shank Advertising, I thought it necessary to get my hands on the latest AP Stylebook. The office manager said, “Absolutely — no worries. I’ll order one of those thingamajiggers today.”

Yay!

The spiral-bound guide arrived and I settled in, prepared for whatever freakish grammar query may pop up.

[Ominous background music kicks in.]

Just a few days ago, though, the AP Stylebook powers that be sucker-punched me by deciding to give in to the hoards of people who relentlessly complained about constantly having to hyphenate the word. The new rule? The unhyphenated email kicks its hyphenated cousin e-mail off the stage.

And that, readers, is monumental. Even more newsworthy than Web site changing to website. It’s so monumental because, in the English language, compound nouns that start with a single letter do not lose their hyphens. For example:

• A-frame
• G-string
• S-curve
• T-ball
• T-shirt
• U-turn
• X-ray

It seems strange to me that the hyphen is missing in email, too, because for the three people who still don’t know what electronic mail is, reading the word without the hyphen encourages improper pronunciation: ehMAIL. And that, as the rest of us in the know already know, isn’t correct. And now, to add insult to injury, I have an out-of-date stylebook! Oh, the humanity.

Why should email take over? Perhaps because the majority of people, while tweeting and texting and e-mailing (er, emailing) on a daily basis, decided that it’s just too complicated to add the hyphen to a word that gets communicated on such a frequent basis, and those people bended the AP Stylebook editors to their will.

So — lazy wins.

And you know what? That’s probably OK in this case. It may not be a decision based on correctness, but many, many folks will be much happier — and faster — tweeters and texters with this new rule in their back pocket.

One last detail: Email with an uppercase “E” is the correct way to begin a sentence; email with a lowercase “e” is correct in all other sentence constructions. Good times.

Recently, several of our clients have asked us to create a name for their product or service. It’s a challenge that can be fun, fascinating, frustrating and fulfilling. Sometimes logical approaches work, sometimes it’s more art than science and sometimes you just have to wait for it to fly in out of nowhere and plow you over.

Of course, you can never know which way you’ll find your name at the start of the process. So, in order to simplify the process for you, we thought we’d provide a few things to remember when finding a name that works for your product or service.

1) It must be memorable: As one of our past creative directors used to say, “You can’t bore people into buying something.” And a name that people can’t remember won’t help sales. Good example: Amazon.com. Named after the world’s largest river, Amazon.com is easy to remember and implies that it is teeming with products. Another good example is Monster.com … which … uh … well, I’m not exactly certain what the concept is with that one.

In both cases, the name doesn’t explicitly say what services they offer. But they’re both more memorable than, say onlinebookseller.com or jobsearch.com. Relevance can be important, however, so try and maintain a balance when creating a memorable name.

2) It must be protectable: When we have a naming project for our clients, we always double-check with our attorneys to ensure that there aren’t any trademark conflicts with an existing name. The unfortunate reality is that a name doesn’t even have to be exactly the same as an existing name to warrant potential legal action. The attorney we rely on is thorough enough that if there is even a slight chance of conflict, he recommends not using the name.

The legal fees incurred in double-checking that a name is available to be trademarkable can add up quickly, however. Discuss with your attorneys the possibility of sending multiple names for review at the same time, and you might be able to get an “economy discount,” so to speak.

3) Try to anticipate unsavory connections: Try your best to look out for negative connotations of your name, or obvious similarities to unfortunate words. Not that it’s completely avoidable. If someone wants to make fun of your name, they’ll find a way to do it. Even Apple — who excels at keeping their names simple — is victim to the occasional mockery, as evidenced by “iTampon’s” appearance as one of the top trending topics on Twitter shortly after the release of the iPad.

4) Envision how it will work as a domain name: Sometimes when two words run together, there can be an unfortunate result. My favorite example is when I was doing online research for insurance, and found a company named Youngs Insurance. Perhaps they were afraid that YoungsInsurance.com was too long, and tried to shorten their Web address to youngsins.com. That particular Web address is no longer live, so apparently they’ve since changed it … for the better, I might add.

5) Patience is a virtue: We’ve named a lot of products, a lot of services and a lot of babies around this office. Believe us when we say we know how difficult it can be. My favorite anecdote is from when my parents were opening a coffee shop. In addition to the stress of finalizing menus and finding vendors for their food and coffee, they found themselves struggling to find the right name. Nothing quite captured those harrowing months like this humorous name suggestion from my dad: “Grounds for Divorce.”

Our agency sets out aways from the hustle and bustle, on a nice patch of wooded area.  If you think about that Robert Frost poem about the two roads diverged in a yellow wood, the path to our agency is definitely down the road less traveled by.  Whether “that has made all the difference,” I’m not sure.  But it does make for a great creative environment.  For some reason, the ideas flow a little better when you look out your window and see a stand of  trees–or a family of raccoons, like in footage below captured out of one of our office windows.

What is certain is that, when it comes to effective advertising, it just might pay to take the road less traveled by.  Sure, there are plenty of ads out there that try to claim the same great things, and attempt to shout louder than the others.  For me, the most memorable ads, the calls to action that strike me, stand apart from the rest and go places the others don’t.

When people first learn that I work in advertising, they often become enthusiastic. They want to talk about television commercials – the ones they love, and the ones they hate.

Then, they want to talk about Bewitched, or one of the dozens of other television shows and movies featuring ad agencies.

They want to know if we play most of the day. They ask if our clients buy every idea we present. And, they need to know what celebrities we have met over the years.

Sometimes, my new acquaintances say how exciting it must be to work in advertising.

They are right, of course. Even after many years, I still find our business fascinating. But, what I really love about the business is the part that rarely gets mentioned.

Recently, I had an opportunity to talk with a tulip grower in Amsterdam. We arrived just a week or so too late to see the glorious blooms of these famous flowers. So, I asked the grower – where are the tulips? He assured me that the plants were right on schedule, and the bulbs were ready to harvest. His response was a good one.

“For us,” he said. “It’s all about the bulbs.”

“Aha,” I thought. That isn’t so different from our business. Everyone wants to see the color…the show…the magic.

But, for those of us in the advertising business, it’s all about the story.

It’s about capturing the essence of a business, telling their story in an engaging way, and producing a desired action.

Yes, we have fun in our jobs. But, we work hard, too.
We meet well-known personalities. But, they tend to be real people underneath.
We present many ideas to our clients. Some they like. Others they reject.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how many dollars we spend to produce a dazzling TV commercial, or how much media we buy to reach the masses, or how many “clicks” we generate over the Internet. If the story isn’t right, the rest of the dollars are wasted.

That’s why, when people ask me what we do, I tell them simply: We are storytellers.

Of course, this is all from a writer’s perspective. Our graphic designers, media buyers and Internet marketers might tell something else is more important than the message.

The clients? Clients will say they just want results. But that’s another story.

Today’s episode: “Scent technology”

Recently, I picked up a bottle of Red Zone, a men’s shower gel from the makers of Old Spice. Normally I’m a bar of soap and washcloth kind of guy, but due to a coupon/rebate combo this particular shower gel was practically free. Not quite as good as completely free, but still pretty good.

The next morning as I was taking my shower, I took a closer look at the product container. (By the way, does the phrase “taking a shower” make any sense at all? For the one who’s showering, there’s no “taking” involved in the process whatsoever. You don’t keep any of the water that sprays on you, and in fact, in the washing process, it actually takes microscopic bits of you with it. Then again, “taking a shower” is much less disturbing than the phrase “spraying down my lumpy, naked body,” so we’ll go with it for now.)

Anyway, examining the label to see what made this particular shower gel so special, I noticed this blurb underneath the Red Zone logo: “8-hour scent technology.”

**Snicker**

I get the point they are trying to make: this wondrous marvel of modern hygiene supposedly makes you smell good all day. But “scent technology?” IT’S A SHOWER GEL.

Granted, some advertising is built on overexaggeration and hyperbole. And it’s not the first time I’ve seen the word “technology” applied to products that have no mechanical, electronic or digital components of any kind. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still try to figure out why exactly it makes sense to people. Heck, if you want to go that route, I have built-in scent technology, too. The difference is that mine is powered by Taco Bell.

I suppose the important thing for Old Spice is that having a silly-sounding product descriptor hasn’t stopped me from using Red Zone each morning. Perhaps one of these days I’ll give myself the sniff test about 3:30 in the afternoon and see once and for all whether I should boycott it based on their 8-hour claim. But chances are even if I do find that my less-than-perfect body chemistry has caused a critical failure in the scent technology’s fragrance-emission systems before its 480-minute runtime has elapsed, I probably won’t complain too much.

Well, assuming I can get it for practically free again, that is.

When my wife and I had our oldest son, we spent a ton of time trying to figure out names, so as not to saddle him with some poorly thought-out albatross for the rest of his life. When it comes to living, breathing carbon-based entities, it’s not fair to try and be creative at all costs. But when it comes to a living, breathing digital entity, I have no such reservations.

Recently, I was tasked with naming our Armstrong|Shank agency blog — a project I was excited to do. The challenge in naming a company blog is finding a name that fits what you do and also creates an expectation for what the reader is about to experience. Now, if you’re a financial business, the direction seems simple: you want the name to say “We know money.” If you’re in the ag business, you want the name to say “We know farming, or ranching, or whatever.”

But what do you say when you’re in advertising, an industry whose split personality straddles the line between art and business? As one who spent a number of hours coming up with various name ideas, I’ve found it can be especially tough. Do you try and push your business expertise? Your creative expertise? Do you get arrogant and try to do both? Good question.

In my search, I was all over the landscape — marketing and advertising-related puns (“Ad Libs”), inspirational messages (“Insight that Incites”), esoteric creative concepts (“Crawlspace”), names related to our agency’s street address (“7450”) or pyramid-shaped logo (“Four-Point Perspective”) and so on. I asked for input from all over the building, which was both helpful … and not. More opinions meant more people to please, which wasn’t easy.

At one point, I took a new philosophy toward it. While this blog is meant to be many things — a gathering place for business professionals looking for insight, a resource for marketing expertise and a forum for creative expression — the one thing it has to be, due to its very nature as a blog, is free-flowing … not boring, stuffy business-speak.

I extended my name search into realm of the absurd. I tried to develop an expectation of creativity in the same way that a hard-rockin’, mind-blowin’ movie trailer psyches you up for the latest action flick. Names like “A Bullet Train from the Wind-swept Plains,” “Flight of the Magic Chicken Man,” and “Intergalactic Ferrari Force 5000” were born. I didn’t expect any of them to realistically make the cut — and boy oh boy, did they not make the cut — but I have to admit they still held a small place in my heart.

While the wacky detour didn’t produce an acceptable idea, it did help with the process of elimination. Regrouping, I went back to my drawing board to see where I’d been before. On second glance, one name stuck out to me. I presented it to Ed, my creative director, on the grounds that it was simple, appropriate to both the creative and business sides of our business, and it had potential for an interesting design. He agreed, it moved on to the big boss Susan, and now it sits at the top of this page.

If you mapped out my naming quest, it’d look like one of those Family Circus cartoons where Jeffy traipses in, over and around every square inch of the neighborhood. But at the end of the day, much like little Jeffy, I feel we ended up safe on the doorstep, with a blog name that fits to boot.

My father used to keep a sign on his desk at work that said, “Brevity is a virtue.” He was a busy man — always more of a doer than a talker, and was constantly annoyed by people who liked to spend hours talking about a problem rather than doing something about it. At age 70, he still has more energy and initiative than any three other people I know, combined.

If I didn’t look so much like him, I would swear we weren’t related. As a writer, I am prone to the obligatory pitfalls of excessive daydreaming, procrastinating and general goofing around that seem to plague the profession. But, as fathers usually are, he is right. And if you are trying to attract new customers, you should listen to him.

People are busy. They may not be getting anything done, but they are busy nonetheless. And if you want to interrupt their lives and expect them to listen to what you have to say, you had better get their attention…and you’d better be brief.

People make split-second decisions about businesses in the same way that they do with people — through first impressions. In advertising, these first impressions are the print ads, the radio and television spots, the outdoor boards, the Web banners.

When meeting someone at a party who won’t shut up about themselves, most will label them a bore and tune out. It’s the same with advertising. You want to leave them intrigued, inspired, and maybe even enthused about wanting to get to know you better. But you want customers to come to you for that information. You want them to initiate the contact.

Which leads us to the places where it is actually good form to prattle on exhaustively about the benefits of your product or service. The Web sites, the 800 numbers and the brochures work great for answering all the questions (though even these need to be well-organized and to the point.) The trick is to get people asking YOU for the answers. To do that you need to be brief, among other things.